Polymeric labels are applied to a variety of bottles, containers and other surfaces to provide, for example, information about the product being sold or to display a trade name or logo. Polymeric labels can provide various advantageous characteristics not provided by paper labels, such as durability, strength, water resistance, curl resistance, abrasion resistance, gloss, translucence, and others.
The application of cut paper labels to glass and plastic containers using water-based adhesives is still one of the most prevalent labeling techniques. Consequently, there are many existing machines that have been installed for this type of labeling. These cut-label/patch-label labeling techniques using water-based adhesives work well with paper-based labels applied to glass, plastic, or metal substrates, because the wet adhesive wicks into and through the paper label. This release of the adhesive moisture through the labels allows the adhesive to dry fully. This technique does not work, however, on polymeric labels because the polymeric label does not permit wicking of the moisture from the adhesive when used as a decal on a window or a patch-label on a container. This can make the polymeric labels adhered with cold-glue type adhesives prone to “swimming” or moving from the desired label location during downstream processing.
Polymeric label substrates having micro perforations to enhance the rate at which water trapped between the label and the substrate can evaporate have had little success. Initial wet tack with commercially available water-based adhesives remained inadequate. Moreover, the micro perforations tend to permit the passage of wet glue through the pores rendering the printed side of label on the container sticky and marring the graphics.
It is known in the art to construct a multilayer film having a coating layer on the wet-adhesive-receiving surface of the film that includes a filler component. These films can offer fair performance as labels when attached to containers with aqueous-based cold glues. However, these films are known to have manufacturing and processing issues.
There remains in the art need for a polymeric label that can be applied using conventional, converting, printing, cutting, handling, and labeling equipment in conjunction with common inks, aqueous fountain solutions, solvents, coatings, and adhesives. Particularly, there is a need for a polymeric label structure that performs well in printing presses that require substrates in sheet form as well as conversion of these films from roll stock into unprinted sheets, and the stacking of the sheets.